To take the industry-academia partnership in education to the next level, the country’s IT majors, including Wipro, Infosys BPO and TCS, are now in talks to come together for education initiatives. So far, all three have launched their own initiatives to train teachers and students in information technology. While Infosys BPO has Project Genesis to train faculty, which in turn teaches students, Wipro recently launched a similar programme called Mission 10x. According to Infosys BPO Ltd’s HR vice-president Nandita Gurjar, education is the only way to tackle the shortage of skilled manpower in the sector. “Poaching from each other is no solution.

The only long-term solution is to create a talent pool that is large enough for everybody to draw from,” she said. This initiative is likely to be launched next year and n the first year of its operation it will benefit 400,000 students across the 10 universities and the IT giants will adopt their states. “If everybody works in the same space there will be competition. So each of us will adopt a state where we can tie up with colleges to train their faculty and students,” Gurjar said. The companies will work in whichever state they have their corporate headquarters. Although Wipro did not confirm the development, they said that such a move was likely and it was just a matter of time before the companies came together. “There will be consolidation as time goes by and we are open to working with other companies,” Wipro’s Talent Transformation vice-president Selvan D said.

In the past few years, talent shortage and poor quality of engineering graduates has prompted almost all the major IT companies in the country to take up education initiatives. According to Nasscom, there will be a shortfall of 500,000 technology professionals in India by 2010. Infosys BPO’s Project Genesis has trained around 11,000 students from 429 colleges across the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Orissa. Wipro’s Mission 10x aims to train 10,000 teachers by 2010. TCS has joined hands with the Gujarat government to help students upgrade their technology and programming skills. According to Gurjar, almost 70 per cent of the students who have been trained as part of Project Genesis have been able to get jobs in various sectors.